[Fistleaf]

I can't beat this level even on Very Easy difficulty.  The escape pods keep getting destroyed.  I always start with 4 Alpha Hercules and 1 Beta Ulysses.  I saw in other walkthroughs that the starting ship types and quantities are different from mine.  Is this a bug (only 1 Beta ship) in the game?  I am playing the 3CD bundled version of Descent:Freespace with Silent Threat and patched with 1.06.

[Kolgena]

Patched to 1.06?

Huh?

Are you playing Silent Threat Reborn? (is a mod for FS2 engine) As general consensus goes, the remake is far, far better than the retail.

[Mongoose]

This mission is kind of notoriously buggy, especially in terms of what ship you start out in; I think it's affected by what you flew in the previous mission, even though it shouldn't be.  There's no real way to save all eight of the escape pods without flat-out cheating; unfortunately, you can't advance in campaigns in FS1 while cheating, though you could if you were playing Silent Threat through the FS Port in FS2.  Although the debriefing does reprimand you, you can advance so long as even one of the pods survives, so try your best to pick off the enemy fighters before they manage to take out all of them, and you should be able to make it through.

And as Kolgena said, if you have FS2, I would highly recommend playing Silent Threat: Reborn.  The team basically took the general story of the rather flawed original Silent Threat campaign, greatly expanded on it, added several more missions, and basically made everything make sense.  It's a far better experience than the original campaign ever was.

[Fistleaf]

I don't have FS2, I only have the demo version FS2:Colossus, so I can't play ST:Reborn.

Is it possible to edit the original ST campaign using FRED1 to change my number of starting ships?  I believe I currently have too few ships (only 5) to complete the mission properly.  By the time the initial enemy fighters are reduced to 1 or 2 ships, 4 new enemy ships will arrive with a cruiser, making it impossible to defend the 1 or 2 remaining escape pods.

On a related note, can I use FSOpen to play FS1 port or any other FSOpen campaigns for that matter?  Only the FS2 main campaign cannot be played because of legal reasons right?

[Qent]

Unfortunately, you need the full FS2 campaign for FSPort to work.

[Galemp]

Still playing FS1? Wow, I commend you.

Silent Threat is, as has been noted, incredibly buggy and unsatisfying. You can progress to the next mission if you save just one pod, though, so do your best.

When you do decide to upgrade to FS2, you can purchase it from http://www.gog.com/ (Good Old Games) for $5.99 and support the original developers and publishers. Then we can help you play Silent Threat: Reborn.

[Mongoose]

If you can get to the point where only a few pods remain and the enemy cruiser and fighter wing jump in, try shunting all power to engines and flying ahead of the pods.  Get each of your wingmen to take out a fighter, and either help them out or attack the cruiser to distract it.  With luck, one of them will make it through.

On another note, you should definitely give full-fledged FS2 a try at some point.  Good Old Games (whose site seems to sadly be down at the moment of my posting this) has the game available as a DRM-free download for only $6.

[Fistleaf]

I have already tried more than 10 times on Very Easy level and have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to win with only 5 ships.  Even when I micromanage each ship to target individual enemies or order all of them to protect 1 pod while I do a suicide mission on the cruiser, the pod still ends up being destroyed.  With 5 ships, it is just not possible to destroy all fighters before the cruiser reinforcements arrive.